


The Lion In Winter & With Extreme Prejudice

by scarecrow_horses



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 10:52:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16701103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrow_horses/pseuds/scarecrow_horses
Summary: From the original Livejournal post, October 2004: "Oh my.I've gone and done it.I admited 'restlessness' to Kyrieane and she suddenly turned evol and bombarded me with prompts!!I was foreced to write drabbles!!Hee.Actually, it was really fun, and so i thought i'd put them up for all to see."Un-beta'd, and not actually drabbles.  Two complete 'ficlets' written with three groups of prompts each.





	The Lion In Winter & With Extreme Prejudice

'The Lion in Winter'

_Sound: eerie silence of falling snow. Word: sacrifice._

When the presents had been unwrapped and the booze sucked down and the turkey - legs up and eviscerated like some pagan sacrifice - was picked down to bone and gristle, Xander made his way outside, standing on the back porch and breathing deep, slow breaths. 

The air was like iced champagne in his nose, cold and utterly still. Snow was falling - _snow_ \- and he was enough of a SoCal boy still to find that...utterly magical. He stood with his arms wrapped around his ribs, insulated from the party-noise by the sliding glass door. A deep calm came to him as he listened to the eerie sound of snow falling. It was like the brush of feathers over skin - a muted hiss, a muffled crystal chime as ice impacted ice. 

He closed his eyes, just breathing, and then opened them again in shock as strong, fuzzy arms wrapped around him from behind. Spike, and his cashmere sweater and his whiskey-smoke-clove scent and his lips tender and cool on the back of Xander's neck. 

"Happy New Year, love," Spike whispered, and Xander smiled.

 

_Sound: ice as cracks on a thawing lake. Word: shimmer._

_*Maine is a weird place*_ Xander thought. It was beautiful, and it was so open, compared to life in Sunnydale. Miles and miles of forest and lakes, cranberry bogs and seashore where there were no people at all. And your neighbors would help you out of a ditch or give you the shirt off their back, but they wouldn't just come around. No walking through the front door at all hours like they'd done to Giles. 

But Xander liked it - liked being alone with Spike. So, tonight, the two of them out behind their house. Mid-February and they were in shirt-sleeves, jeans, and old, old sneakers, sliding on the ice of their own little lake. A weird, unseasonable warm-up and they'd both been restless and wanting to just be _out_ , after three months of cold and ice and snow. _And_ naked cuddling by the fire under a down comforter, but after awhile you just wanted to _run_.

So they were running and sliding and Xander was laughing like a loon until he heard that dry-twig _snap_ and glassine chime of breaking ice. He lurched, losing his footing as icy water swirled over his shoe-top, but then he was flying - falling - and Spike had him on his back in the snow, shaking him gently and growling.

"Xander, you bastard, are you alright pet? Stupid human, should know better, love, you hurt?" The sky shimmered behind Spike - pale green Aurora Borealis and Xander wrapped his arms tight around Spike and smiled up at the dancing sky. 

"I'm fine, Spike - I'm just fine."

 

_Sound: Creak of old leather. Word: sunset. Color: tarnished brass._

Sunset, and Xander stretched lazily, looking at the windows that lined the entire western side of the room. Necro-tempered, something they'd seen once in L.A. and gotten for themselves. Clouds were bulking along the horizon and the sun itself was drowning in clouds - deeply-scarlet ball of fire swaddled and sinking in skeins of lavender and bruise-blue, poppy-red and the rich gold of geraniums. Winter sunset, Xander's favorite.

He sat up and slid to his knees, picking up the poker and jostling the logs in the fireplace for a moment - stirring coals and settling them. The tarnished brass of the andirons winked and gleamed, and the blue and white tiles around the hearth were stacked with cloth-bound and leather-bound journals, old books, new paperbacks, and three days worth of newspapers. Xander put another log on the fire - cherrywood, fragrant and heavy - and smiled to himself at the soft _creak_ of leather as something slid into the club chair behind him. 

He moved backwards, reversing himself and settling with a happy sigh onto Spike. Warm from the electric blanket, bed-tousled hair and sleepy eyes like old lapis, welcoming smile, soft kiss. Winter sunsets, the best of all times.

 

 

'With Extreme Prejudice'

_Scent: ozone after a storm. Words: skitter, lemondrop._

Willy had told them, and at first none of them had believed him, because why should they? But it was true. In one three-day weekend - Presidents Day, actually - they'd actually shut the Initiative down, packed up and moved out. They were _gone_. And more than that - it was like they'd never been. As far as they could tell, the secret installation under the university had been filled in - the caves were scoured of any and all refuse Adam might have left behind. The cameras, the bugs, the _soldiers_ \- all gone. And, Willy said, all their hardware. He said it with a lift of his eyebrow and a _look_ and after a minute they got it. Incredibly, out of fear of possible discovery, they'd rounded up all the 'hostiles' still around with chips and _taken them out_. No more chips. 

And Xander was quietly freaking out, because Spike had been gone for days.

So, him and Oz looking for Spike, because they'd found a few of the 'fixed' hostiles, and the surgeons had done something else. Had deliberately _damaged_ them. So Buffy was engaged in the grim task of putting mentally unhinged, pathetically helpless demons out of their misery. And Xander was frantic to find Spike. 

It had rained all day and just tapered off in the last fifteen minutes and he and Oz were soaking wet, squishing through the cemetery towards Spike's crypt. Gonna start there and work their way out. The air thick with the smell of mud and wet, rotting leaves; the burnt-lemon smell of ozone from a last spear of lightening that had blown a transformer three blocks away. They pushed the crypt door open slowly, so slowly, ready to duck and cover, but there was only the dry skitter of skin over stone, and Xander _knew_. 

He crouched down, duck-walking slowly over to the hunched form that twisted away from him. Torn jeans, no shirt, duster covered in mud, no boots. Hair shaved off, and blood, and a clumsy bandage half-ripped away. Spike snarled at him, then whimpered, his hands clutching his head, his shoulders coming up like little folded angel's wings around his ears. 

Oz settled beside him and Xander sighed in relief - watched as Oz held out his hand, offering... Spike looked at the hand, and at them, then reached out and scooped the lemon drop up and into his mouth. Remembering, maybe. 

Xander hoped so.

 

_Sound: shattering glass. Word: caged._

The sounds from the other room were gradually tapering off - gradually getting quieter, but then there was that familiar, hated sound - the explosive _pop_ and ice-on-tin rattle of shattering glass. 

_Fuck, what'd we forget -_ Xander thought, and he scrambled across the living room to the second bedroom - the one whose windows were carefully boarded over. He stood for a minute outside the door and then he breathed the unlocking word Giles had taught him and pushed it open. Spike, in the corner, gouging the plaster back to the studs, ragged jeans and shredded t-shirt showing streaks of blood. And the fixture, ten feet or more up in the vaulted ceiling, shattered over the carpet. 

Xander picked his way carefully around the mess and Spike caught his scent - turned and snarled, caged animal. Xander hasn't seen his human face in weeks, but that's okay. Spike is getting better, and Xander knows he'll be back to himself one day, sooner or later. He's promised, and he won't break that oath. 

"C'mon and sit with me," Xander says, soft as he can, folding to the floor, and after a moment Spike does. Leans into him, rubbing against his shoulder, snuggling into his chest, rusty grumble of pleasure coming up out of his chest and....

"Sssan..." soft as a sigh. _That_ is why he promised, and that's why he'll never, ever give up.

 

_Sound: alto sax. Word: truth. Scent: night blooming jasmine._

Lee Konitz on the CD player - something Oz had brought over. Alto sax smooth and heavy and slow, winding out into the air. Candles lit, because the electric light was just too bright, sometimes. Sitting on the floor because Spike seemed to like that - seemed more at his ease when he wasn't playing at being the human. Truth in the easy, feline sprawl of his body across the spruce-green Berber, skin the color of old ivory glinting through rips in the jeans he will _not_ let Xander throw away. 

Oz leaning against the couch, eyes closed and head moving gently to the music. Xander himself propped on one elbow, watching Spike. The patio door was open and the curtains sway in a sudden gust. Bell and then fall slack and the apartment was filled with the scent of wet earth and spring rain and night-blooming jasmine. Spike lifted his head, scenting, eyes half-shut. 

And then...twist and shiver of bone and muscle, and for the first time since they found him it was the _human_ face and not the demons, looking at him. Black eyebrows and scarlet lips and the scar, cheekbones high and lifting like the wing of a bird and the oceanic blue of his eyes.

"That's good," Spike says, softly, and Xander knows he's crying - can feel it - and doesn't care. 

"Yeah. That's good, Spike."


End file.
